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First “Fast and Furious”

NOW THIS:

December 12, 2011

According to a spokesperson for Mexican president Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s government was left in the dark about a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration drug money laundering scheme that allegedly facilitated the transfer of millions of dollars to Mexican drug cartels.

The program was similar to Operation Fast and Furious in that the U.S. Department of Justice, under Attorney General Eric Holder, was allegedly furnishing narcotics traffickers with laundered drug proceeds in an attempt to discern how those funds would move, and to whom.

On this week’s Al Punto, a Sunday news program on the Spanish-language television network Univision, Calderon spokeswoman Alejandra Sota said the Mexican government was not aware of, or involved with, any DEA money laundering scheme.

According to a New York Times report, “in operations supervised by the Justice Department and orchestrated to get around sovereignty restrictions” drug enforcement agents “laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels.”

Almost immediately after the Times published the story, and House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa’ssubsequent announcementthat he will expand his investigation of Operation Fast and Furious to examine reports of DEA-facilitated money laundering, the Department of Justice released a public statement disclaiming the practice as perfectly ordinary.

In that statement, the Obama administration claimed it was “working collaboratively with the Mexican government” on the efforts to fight more widespread money laundering.

“As our partners in Mexico have stated, the joint investigations to detect and dismantle money laundering networks have led to important advances and detentions in each country,” the DEA and DOJ jointly said. “The cooperation between the United States and Mexico is based on principles of shared responsibility, mutual trust and respect for the jurisdiction of each country.”

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Mexican elections 2012 the Liberal/left wing candidate:

Excerpt:

Lopez Obrador, 58, a champion of the poor in a country where nearly half the population lives below the poverty line, beat off a challenge from Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard in a survey carried out among supporters of left-wing parties.

“The survey results are in my favor … I will participate in the 2012 electoral contest,” Lopez Obrador told a news conference.

Painted by some opponents as a threat to private business, Lopez Obrador staged huge protests in Mexico City after the 2006 election, saying he had lost because of fraud.

However, his conservative opponent, President Felipe Calderon, rode out the storm and Lopez Obrador’s popularity slumped after voters tired of the demonstrations which brought sections of the capital, including its main thoroughfare, to a standstill for months.

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February 2, 2009

Mexican Pretender Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Pushes On

By Kent Paterson

Lopez Obrador sent President Barack Obama a letter that warned against cutting off the movement of people from Mexico to the US, a migration flow that the charismatic political figure said was largely responsible for preventing a social explosion south of the border

Capping off a January swing through northern and western Mexico, opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador drew tens of thousands of followers to a January 25 rally in Mexico City’s Zocalo square. The purpose of the ex-presidential candidate’s latest rally was to launch a new movement aimed at defending popular economic interests in a time of deepening crisis.

“Today there is suffering because of unemployment, high prices, poverty, insecurity and violence, but above all, there is an uncertainty that is beginning to manifest itself as anxiety and frustration,” Lopez Obrador said in a speech. “All of this exists in an environment of instability, indolence, incapacity, and cynicism on the part of the authorities.”

The Mexico City demonstration followed a tour that took Lopez Obrador, or “El Peje” as he is frequently called, to numerous stops in the states of Chihuahua and Jalisco, where the former Mexico City mayor spoke about migration, economic troubles, violence and insecurity, youth problems, and the US-Mexico relationship in the era of new US President Barack Obama.

At a January 23 rally attended by several hundred people in El Pitillal, Jalisco, a working-class suburb of Puerto Vallarta, Lopez Obrador told supporters he sent President Obama a letter a few days ago that warned against cutting off the movement of people from Mexico to the US, a migration flow the charismatic political figure said was largely responsible for preventing a social explosion south of the border.

“I told (President Obama) in this letter that the migration phenomenon is not going to be solved by building walls and militarizing the border,” Lopez Obrador said. “The solution has to be cooperation between the two countries, especially aimed at the economic development of Mexico.”